Digital lighting technologies, i.e. illumination based on semiconductor light sources, such as light-emitting diodes (LEDs), today offer a viable alternative to traditional fluorescent, HID, and incandescent lamps. Recent advances in LED technology coupled with its many functional advantages such as high energy conversion and optical efficiency, durability, and lower operating costs, has led to the development of efficient and robust full-spectrum lighting sources that enable a variety of lighting effects. For example, fixtures embodying these lighting sources may include one or more LEDs capable of producing different colors, e.g. red, green, and blue, as well as a processor for independently controlling the output of the LEDs in order to generate a variety of colors and color-changing lighting effects, as discussed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,016,038 and 6,211,626, incorporated herein by reference.
Recent developments in digital lighting technologies such as LED-based lighting systems, has made the precise control of digital or solid-state lighting a reality. Consequently, light-based systems are used today to visually communicate information to individuals. For example, patrons waiting to be seated at a dining establishment are often provided with pagers that visually indicate when the staff is ready to seat them.
While advances in digital lighting technologies has given rise to precisely controllable lighting, significant advances made in the field of mobile electronic communications has similarly led to the development of sophisticated personal mobile electronic communication devices such as personal digital assistants and cellular phones that enable individuals to receive and transmit messages in a multitude of formats including text, voice and image. The tremendous demand created by their wireless communications capabilities, convenient small size and relative low cost has consequently resulted in making personal mobile electronic communication devices ubiquitous.
Although the fields of mobile communications and solid-state lighting have seen great advances, systems that combine the use of controllable solid-state lighting and personal mobile electronic communications to further enrich communications are lacking. For example, controllable lighting is only marginally used in circumstances where verbal communication may be difficult. Such circumstances include, for example, crowded spaces such as restaurants and bars where high noise levels make oral communication of orders ineffective, resulting in service that may be out of order or frustratingly slow. Such circumstances also include, by way of example, gatherings where people are served beverages in similar looking glasses, making it difficult for individuals to distinguish between their beverage and their neighbor's beverage.
For example, waiter paging systems exist currently that include transmitters at tables for transmitting signals indicating the need to communicate with wait staff, page units carried by the wait-staff, and central units for receiving and relaying the transmitted signals to pager units. While such systems allow the wait staff sufficient mobility, these paging systems are, however, sub-optimal because they depend on patrons remaining in a particular location, typically a table. And if the transmitters in such paging systems were not tethered to the tables, providing patrons with more mobility, the paging systems would challenge the wait-staff to locate patrons.
Similarly, past attempts at addressing the problem of identifying one's personal item, such as a beverage glass, in circumstances where multiple persons present have items that appear similar or identical, have failed to leverage the advances made in both the controllable solid state lighting and mobile electronic communications fields. For example, attempts at solving this problem range from systems requiring battery powered glasses illuminated with different colors, to systems involving large illuminated surfaces capable of identifying objects, to systems requiring each person in such a circumstance to wear a colored elastic band that matches a similar band placed on his/her personal item. These solutions are, once again, sub-optimal because they either require the installation of expensive equipment such as large special-purpose surfaces, or otherwise require the very individuals that are to benefit from the solution to themselves participate in remembering a distinguishing feature associated with their personal item, such as a color.